


Precious Things

by BarettaVendetta



Series: Tales from the Konoha Library [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Homophobia, Slurs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-27 03:19:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9949994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BarettaVendetta/pseuds/BarettaVendetta
Summary: Team Gai were a team of misfits. Tenten reminisces about her old sensei, killed in battle.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place in the same universe as 'Taming The Wolf'.

_I wanna smash the faces of those beautiful boys…_

 

In a room in a flat in Konoha, a bedside light was switched on. The two kunoichi who occupied the bed disentangled themselves from the sheets. The younger woman began to put her hair up into the buns in which she usually wore it, but the older one laid a hand on her shoulder and said, “Don’t. I like it when you have your hair down.”

Tenten shrugged. “Sorry. Force of habit.” She let her long brown hair tumble back down her back. Shizune watched her out of her remaining eye. Then she said, out of the blue, “I’ve not asked you this before. How long have you known you were gay?”

Tenten frowned. “Gods, I’m really not sure. Since I was about fourteen or fifteen, I think.”

“So before Gai died, basically,” said Shizune. “Did you ever tell him?”

“I did,” said Tenten, “once. And before you ask, no, he wasn’t weird about it. He was very nice, actually. That’s why we all loved Gai. He accepted us.”

“I hope you don’t mind,” said Shizune, “but I always got the impression he favoured Lee.”

Tenten pushed back her hair. “He did, sure, but it’s not like he just ignored Neji and me all the time. Not that you could ignore Neji. We all worked our arses off under him.” She lay on her back, arms behind her head, and continued, “It’s a long story.

Shizune flipped onto her side and made herself comfortable as Tenten began to tell her story.

 

“I say it was when I was fourteen or fifteen. Thinking about it, it might have been earlier, because I remember seeing the Fifth coming back from a mission – sorry, hope you don’t mind – when I was a little kid, about six, I think, and I just thought she was beautiful. This amazing strong woman with long blonde hair who could kill you with a finger. She was the reason why I wanted to be a ninja – well, that and the money, we never had much growing up and my parents thought it’d be a good little earner for me. I didn’t want to go into building with Dad and he’d have told me it was men’s work or some crap like that. He’s very conservative. Well, you know that. He’s one of the reasons why I’m here now.

“Kurenai Sarutobi-Yuuhi – well, she was just Kurenai Yuuhi back then – she was another one. And the woman in the flower shop. Ino’s mum…whatserface. I had crushes. I must have a thing for older women. I mean, I fancied girls back in the Academy but it wasn’t something I made public. The other kids were calling me a dyke even before I knew I was one. I don’t know if they actually thought I was gay, they were just finding reasons to pick on me. One of them actually asked me out and then he just laughed at me and said, ‘You’re really an ugly girl.’” (“He must have been blind,” Shizune interjected, laughing.) “And they made fun of my hair and my clothes, ‘Bunhead Bitch’ was one of the nicer things I got called. And the fact I didn’t have a proper name, my parents named me like they do back in Tanokuni. If anything, that made me even more determined to cling onto my heritage. I wasn’t going to let those idiots make me ashamed of my family. I mean, my dad is an arsehole but he’s still my dad, you know? Lee’s family were from there as well, apparently.

“I didn’t want to be a medic-nin or do any of that seduction stuff people like Ino Yamanaka do. I wanted to use weapons, I knew as soon as I picked up a kunai for the first time that it was for me. When I was angry, I’d practice throwing kunai at targets and imagine I was hitting one of those boys instead. And I wanted to do taijutsu as well, but it was mainly the weapons. I loved it when we got to have a go with them. Sickles, staffs, you name it, though I was never really into swords for some reason. Mainly things you could throw, or tools. It’s the builder’s daughter in me.

“You want to know about Gai, right? Well, he got me, Neji and Lee. I really do think we all got put on the same team ‘cos we were all misfits. Neji was in the branch Hyuuga family and he was way stronger than Hinata or Hanabi, and you’ve seen Hanabi fight, you know how strong he is. And he learned by watching. He was a genius and he knew it and they knew it. And gods, he was bitter. Lee, he couldn’t do ninjutsu. The amount of shit he got for it…fucking hell. Plus he was an orphan, he was living in that care home with the nuns. And me, you know about. The second-generation rice eater bitch.

“And Gai accepted us. He saw himself in Lee and they had the same skill set, he taught Lee everything he knew. And they were like a comedy act. They drove Neji and me mad sometimes, always shouting about youth and springtime and all that stuff, but being on a team with Lee without Gai being there…it’s like seeing Kiba without a dog. But I’m not going to act all bitter and say Gai ignored us, because he didn’t. He worked us to the bone. I was aching all over for days after my first training session with him. And he asked us what our goals were and he took us seriously, even me saying I wanted to be accepted. It was him who taught me summoning jutsu, you know? I couldn’t do animals, but he knew from my form sensei I was good with weapons. So he’d give me scrolls and make me summon weapons, again and again and again. At first it was just a few kunai, but then I was getting sickles, axes, balls of metal, nunchaku, you name it. And OK, so they’re not effective against wind users or Hyuugas, I found that out the hard way, but when I combined them with wires and set traps, I could attack opponents from behind, from unexpected places. Like when I repeated the Chuunin Exams and I pulled out, and this time it wasn’t against a wind user, thank the gods, so I’m up in the air just tossing  needles and kunai and sickles, it was like the sky was raining metal. I swear. I’d also taken the precaution of attaching a flick knife to my boot. That came in handy. When Gai hugged me afterwards he nearly broke my ribs, I’m not joking. But he was dead proud. He cried and everything. He cried a lot, Gai did.

“I managed to get him alone one time because I just desperately needed someone to talk to, and Neji had his own shit to deal with. And I told him, ‘I like girls.’ He knew what I meant. He smiled at me in that typical Gai way and told me that love was love. It mattered not one bit whether I was into boys, girls or both. And if he ever saw anyone giving me grief for it, he would put them down. We found out much later he'd had male and female lovers, so maybe that was why he was so fierce about it. Better than my own dad was.”

Shizune noticed the bitterness in Tenten’s voice, and squeezed her shoulder.

“I miss Gai a lot, you know?” Tenten said, and sighed. “At least he went down fighting. We didn’t see him die, but we heard. We heard how he died. Akatsuki. And Lee…gods. I’ll never forget Lee’s face. He was never the same after Gai died.”

 

_The mass funeral. Lee collapsing to the ground, screaming Gai’s name over and over, while Neji and Tenten stand helplessly. Lee is in a space that neither of them can enter._

_The fire that warmed Team Gai has gone out. Snuffed out like a candle. Gai, a man whose presence filled a room, a man whose white teeth shone as he laughed, who laid a large but gentle hand on Tenten’s shoulder and told her that she was his precious student and he was responsible for her and that he would always be fighting her corner. And that she must never give up and never let the meaningless words of others drag her down. She must channel her anger into her fists and feet and scrolls, and make those sharp blades dance._

**Author's Note:**

> I have so many headcanons for Tenten. This story has some of them. We always heard about Gai's relationship with Lee, but I always wondered what his relationship with the other two was like.


End file.
